Posts Tagged ‘toyota market share’

Toyota's latest investment will help keep up with consumer demand for products like the new Avalon.

With steady growth in North American sales pinching capacity throughout the auto industry, Toyota Motor Corp is struggling to maintain its market share and now plans to boost capacity with a $200 million investment at three key factories in the U.S.

Toyota is far from alone. Sales in the U.S. are expected to jump from 14.5 million in 2012 to 15.5 million this year, leaving a number of makers racing to keep pace. Among manufacturers now planning to add employees and, if necessary, expand existing facilities are Ford Motor Co, General Motors Co. Chrysler Group, Nissan Motors and Honda.

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The steep recession that started in 2008 forced manufacturers and suppliers to trim capacity and until now they have been slow to add new capacity even as sales have recovered. But the tempo of new investment finally is picking up.

The launch of the new 2012 Camry will be critical for Toyota to reverse its current slump.

The next few months will be critical for Toyota. The maker has finally gotten its global production network up to speed after a slowdown caused by Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami. And with the launch of the new 2012 Camry, Toyota is setting in motion a major product blitz that will bring close to a dozen significant vehicles to market over the next year.

But that may not be enough to pull the maker out of the doldrums, warns a key industry analyst, who believes it could take years for the troubled maker to climb back after a series of problems that began with a series of embarrassing recalls in late 2010.

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“This could take several years, or at least one product cycle, to implement,” cautioned Peter Nesvold, an analyst with Jefferies & Co. in a presentation to investors.”

There’s little doubt Toyota has some series challenges ahead of it. The maker recalled more than 10 million vehicles last year alone. And while the majority were connected to concerns about so-called unintended acceleration, the maker also faced problems ranging from steering to braking and excess corrosion that could cause pieces of its minivans to fall off while driving.

Toyota expects to make up much of its lost production of vehicles like the RAV-4 during the second half of its current fiscal year.

Toyota’s balance sheet will take a significant hit as a result of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Northeast Japan earlier this year, the disaster now forecast to reduce the maker’s profits by 35% for the current fiscal year.

The maker’s operating profit is expected to slip to 300 billion yen, or $3.7 billion at the anticipated exchange rate of 82 yen to the dollar – which is also significantly lower than the consensus forecast of 434 billion yen anticipated by 23 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. But Toyota officials now say they also anticipate a faster recovery than first feared, with production during the second half of the fiscal year, which began on April 1, running substantially higher than originally planned.

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“We will enter a phase of production make-up and recovery and will make up for lost production to the tune of 350,000 units,” said Senior Managing Director Takahiko Ijichi, during a conference call this morning, “so the overall unit production decrease would be 450,000 units” for the full fiscal year.